Abstract

With the development of new undergraduate degree programs within Murdoch University's School of Engineering, the decision was made to offer courses, as much as practical, online. In addition to being driven by other key objectives, the web was seen to empower students with regard to their learning experience by providing an environment well suited to support student control of the learning process.

However, the self directed learning environment requires an infrastructure to support the students and foster their construction of knowledge:*to present information within an organised framework *to know whether the material is being covered appropriately *to know what component in relation to the whole course has and still needs to be undertaken within the timeframe *to ensure meaningful interpretations are made and learning objectives being achieved.

In addition to providing mechanisms for the student to self regulate their learning, the infrastructure must be able to provide the teacher with mechanisms to evaluate that the learning is meaningful within the requirements of the course. In order to address these issues, two environments have been built. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate and to discuss the components of this infrastructure:* the elements common to the two environments:* support provided to early year students to plan and monitor their own study program* the navigational scheme provided for senior students with more developed study habits.

This allowing the students to complete elements of a course at their own pace, and with some degree of choice as to the order in which topics are studied and how these elements are integrated into the instructional framework that supports learner control and self regulation.